Collide
by Hannah Taylor1
Summary: Based on Howie Day's Collide. I'm told the song was featured on a Bones episode, but don't remember hearing it. Whether it was or wasn't, the lyrics have Booth and Brennan written all over them. Two-shot version of how I wish the season had ended.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This serves as an in lieu thereof for Little Pieces, whose next chapter I will have ready by June 2****nd****. I only have a little left to add to the piece, but I fainted from a combination of flu-heatstroke-exhaustion today at graduation and don't have the energy to finish in time for the usual Thursday posting. It has been a very long year and, it feels like, the longest week of my life. So the final installment will be either June 2****nd**** or a few days after.**

**Thanks to EternalDestiny304 for her wonderful betas and encouragement as I struggle through this last week of the school year. Your friendship is a true blessing. And thanks so much to those who reviewed Little Pieces last chapter. You don't know how much your kind words mean, especially when I'm feeling flat out lousy.**

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

Brennan woke slowly Wednesday morning, her alarm deliberately not set. Her first thoughts were that the sheets felt pleasant. Freshly laundered, they were still tightly tucked into the mattress, not yet disrupted by restless dreams that frequently dragged her bedclothes from their moorings no matter how carefully they were anchored. She shifted onto her side, enjoying the heavy pull of the comforter as it resisted her movement before relenting.

She pointed her toes backwards and forwards, coaxing a lazy stretch from her calf muscles as she watched the sunlight unfurling through her window blinds. The gauzy, golden light drifted across the wooden floor and came to rest at the foot of the bed like an additional blanket on her feet.

Brennan rearranged her cheek so that it rested on a cool spot on the satin pillow and closed her eyes again. Her mind was far from sleepy as she lay quietly, thinking about her plans for the day. She didn't usually traffic in what-ifs—they were unscientific and impractical—but she couldn't help wondering what, if anything, might be different when she woke up on Thursday.

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

Booth was awake long before the sun decided to finally rise and shine. Tentative fingers of light poked their way beneath his curtains and stopped just short of the carpet. It took a while before the fingers seemed to elongate, developing an ironically bone-like structure as they ventured in his overall direction. He watched moodily, tracking each champagne-hued fingerprint as it came closer and closer to his bed's headrest.

There was no avoiding the direction his thoughts insisted on taking, in their own way every bit as inexorable as the sunlight. Curtains and blinds couldn't stop him from revisiting old decisions and their repercussions, anymore than the pillow over his eyes could stop him from seeing her face. He groaned into the worn cotton pillowcase and wondered if today the impossible might happen. Maybe. Just maybe. Could the rules of math and science finally be broken just enough to allow parallel paths to intersect?

The sun still hadn't quite reached its target when the alarm went off at 5:00 am. Booth knocked it into the wastebasket in irritation before reaching out from under the covers and yanking the plug. He flopped onto his back, kicking a pillow onto the floor in the process. Muttering a curse, he grabbed the remaining pillow and clamped it over his face. Not that it made any difference—he'd slept a grand total of three hours, maybe, and there was no chance of squeezing in a little extra shut eye even if he could convince his brain to stop hashing and rehashing all the possibilities.

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

After giving up on further sleep, she followed her regular morning routine. Got out of bed. Feet straight into slippers. Threw back the comforter and pillows, smoothed out wrinkles in the sheets, pulled them taut again, drew the comforter up once more, laid neatly folded clothes in the spot where she usually rested her head, replaced pillows, replaced comforter. Poured water—already boiled in a pot with a preset timer—into a cup with a teabag selected the night before. While the tea steeped in its usual spot in the corner of her sink, she showered. Ten minutes from the time in—lather, rinse, no repeat on most days—and out. Removed teabag, took a long sip. Dried hair. Another sip. Back into the bedroom, carrying the tea. Toweled off briskly, got dressed, more tea. She had chosen her outfit the night before, but changed her mind several times before finally settling on jeans and a simple coral-hued blouse. A change in outfit meant a change in necklace. It took her a while to settle on a jade pendant with gold accents.

Preliminary ablutions complete, Brennan stepped back and eyed herself in the mirror critically. She liked what she saw but, in the end, would the outfit really matter? Vanity dictated an overwhelming **yes**, even when she knew better. She scowled with embarrassment at her irrationality but still did her hair and makeup with more care than usual before checking her phone for emails and messages.

Cam knew she wouldn't be in today. Angela didn't, and had left multiple messages wondering where she was when 8:00 a.m. came and went, and whether she was okay.

Smiling in spite of herself, Brennan texted a brief reply.

_I'm fine. If all goes well, I might be better this evening. ~Brennan_

She turned off her phone at that point, perceptive enough to at least realize that her best friend would demand more details before she was ready to share them.

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

He stubbed his toe getting out of bed. There was no hint of hope in the phone messages he checked automatically, and his boss was PO-d that he was taking a personal day without warning. The light bulb went out in the bathroom, and he didn't have a replacement. He couldn't get the water temperature right. He was almost out of shampoo and didn't realize it until his head was already soaking wet. He forgot a towel and had to run out of the bathroom butt-naked, dripping every which way, only to find he really needed to do laundry.

He cut himself shaving in the semi-darkness.

Booth swallowed a snarl, for fear of slicing even deeper into his skin, and grabbed for a piece of toilet paper to stick on the little nick before blood could ooze down his Adam's apple and onto the collar of his shirt. His violent grab knocked the roll straight into the toilet, where it bobbed sadly.

Yet again, he glared at himself in the mirror and wondered what he was supposed to wear. And what if he was a total moron for even thinking …. He silenced that little voice and retreated back into the bedroom where he swapped his usual work clothes for jeans and an FBI Tee. Indecision almost made him change again, but he managed to get out of the room before, as Jared would undoubtedly comment if he could see him, Booth turned into a girl completely.

Usually, he'd have breakfast. He was all about his Wheaties. Today, along with every other morning habit he'd dispensed with, he walked out the door without even chugging his customary glass of O.J. It was only after he locked the door behind him that he realized: he wasn't wearing his usual suit jacket. His wallet was in its pocket. And his keys.

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

She didn't go there directly. Sitting around doing nothing for hours was far from her style.

Brennan chose instead to run small errands that had been piling up for several weeks, in the wake of a particularly time-consuming murder investigation. Picking up dry cleaning, grocery shopping—eventually she exhausted her stock of tasks that could be completed in the allotted time, and all that was left to do was one of three options:

Go in to work and face intense curiosity which would only increase when she left early

Work on the next chapter of her novel, and risk having to stop at a point when the plot was developing nicely

Do some kind of physical activity to release tension

In the end, she went for option 3, but combined it with a fourth choice. Dropping her car off for its much-delayed annual inspection, Brennan changed into a pair of running shoes she always kept in the trunk and began the long walk toward what Angela might call destiny, and what she more prosaically would call 'remote possibility.'

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

He couldn't call anybody. He'd left his cellphone inside, along with everything else, dammit. Of course, his extra key was at Rebecca's place. Parker had borrowed it to retrieve his backpack while Booth was at work one day, and forgot to return it to the usual spot underneath the potted plant.

Booth rattled the knob futilely and debated kicking the door in, but decided it wasn't worth the cost of replacing. He could always borrow Brennan's spare key. If she showed up, that is. If not, he could catch a cab to the Jeffersonian and borrow cash.

Luckily, he was wearing comfortable shoes and had several hours to kill. What the hell. A long walk might help him burn off some of his nerves. Or, it might make them worse, if he couldn't stop thinking. That seemed likely as he started down the stairs, avoiding the elevator for fear of running into a neighbor and having to make small talk when all he really felt like doing was heading out to the shooting range and gunning down a couple hundred targets.

His footsteps were magnified by the concrete walls, reverberating around him in the enclosed space and in his ears. Unsettled by the acoustic parallel to his heart's loud thudding, Booth took the stairs two at a time. The fire door loomed in front of him and he lunged at it with the full weight of his body. It gave more easily than expected and he went face forward towards the sidewalk. He caught himself just in time and straightened sheepishly, only to almost be knocked almost off his feet again by a gust of wind that shoved halfway him back into the building with the force of its sneak attack.

Booth planted his feet more firmly and started off, his shoulders hunched in silent protest at the weather's untoward cooperation with his mental state. Not like he believed in omens or anything, but shouldn't today be sunny if things were finally going to go their way? Around him, trees swayed wildly. A garbage can in line with others not yet retrieved from yesterday broke ranks and came straight at Booth, forcing him into the middle of the street to avoid it. A black Jetta swerved and honked furiously before speeding off into the distance.

Jaw set, Booth stepped back onto the pavement. Automatically, he went into workout mode, his stride lengthening as if he was warming up for something. Randomly, he thought of Brennan running after him in the Jeffersonian gardens shortly after they first met. For the first time all morning he grinned, seeing her gamely skipping sideways, still arguing case minutiae. Even back at the very beginning, he'd liked having her be the one to chase him. She was far out in front of him in so many ways, but he was faster. Yeah. Definitely faster, at least when it came to power walking. His smile faded. Others ways too, actually.

_Faster to break the rules and want more than a partnership. _

_Faster to realize he wanted a lifetime of mornings waking up with her body tangled around his._

_Faster to spill the beans and scare her halfway across the planet. _

_Faster to move on, just when she was finally starting to keep pace. _

His mind flashed back to times when he almost hadn't been fast enough.

_Not fast enough at figuring out that Kenton was gunning for Brennan or that Pam was so completely unhinged._

_Not fast enough to realize what an idiot he had been by giving up so completely, when he knew full well that she was always slower to arrive at emotional finish lines._

_Not nearly fast enough at figuring out where she and Hodgins were buried._

It was a memory he'd tried to bury as deeply as the car she'd been in, with only moderate success. With no warning, the fear wrapped around him noose-like all over again.

_He squinted across the quarry, pleading for some kind of sign before finally spotting the sand flurry. _

His walk turned into a jog.

_Once again, he staggered down that long incline, the sands shifting ominously beneath his feet but not quite managing to trip him._

The jog became a run.

_Somehow the sand dune was behind him and he was racing toward the grave, coat flapping in the wind, her name an endless loop inside his head._

Startled passersby jumped out of the way as Booth bolted by, intent on outpacing the grit that flew between his teeth and the terror that accompanied it, seemingly carried on the wind.

Past and present collided inside his head and now Booth sprinted. Down on his knees in that sand all over again, clawing at the layers separating her from him, he prayed now as he had prayed then.

_Dear God, please don't let me be too late. Please don't let me have lost her forever because I took too long to get to this place. _

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Next week's installment of Little Pieces may be delayed a few days, depending on whether I have internet access on my vacation. Thanks to everybody who reviewed the first chapter of this story and/or the last chapter of LP. And many thanks to my wonderful beta, EternalDestiny304.**

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

"Hot chocolate?"

Brennan looked up from the last dregs of coffee she'd been nursing on the park bench.

The coffee cart vendor held out a steaming drink. "On the house."

Surprised, she took the cup. "Thank you." The scientist warmed her hands around the paper circumference and held his gaze, waiting for an explanation.

He shuffled his feet. "Kinda lousy day to be outside."

"You are outside."

"Not for much longer." The vendor grimaced as another blast of wind rattled his wares and sent several cardboard sleeves flying far beyond his reach.

Brennan was as bad at reading social subtext as her partner was at reading human remains for basic forensic evidence, but years of patient tutoring had broadened her knowledge base enough that she realized something was being asked of her, albeit silently.

"I'm waiting for somebody."

The man crammed his hands into the wide pockets of his dingy apron. "Is this the same somebody you used to have coffee with like five times a week?"

It was an intrusive question, she reflected, buying herself time by taking a careful sip, but the observation was valid given how frequently she and Booth had visited this cart over the years.

"Yes."

He nodded, obviously pleased with his correct hypothesis. "You guys haven't been around for ages. What happened? Did Joe up the block steal you away? He's had his license taken away twice, you know. Doesn't sanitize his equipment properly."

She'd seen the two vendors conversing on occasion and assumed they were casual friends. It was hard to tell whether he was now joking or genuinely concerned about both the competition and her well-being.

The man abruptly sat down beside her and held out his hand. "Francis Malone."

She shook his hand uncertainly. "Dr. Temperance Brennan."

"Five years you've been buying coffee from me and I'm only just now learning your name." He shook his head. "Call me nosy, Dr. Brennan, but I like to get to know my customers just a little bit better than that. Helps keep me, and them, coming back every day, you know what I mean?"

Brennan considered this while chewing on a sugary fragment in her drink, a marshmallow, presumably. "Yes. Interacting with your clientele could be considered vital to your trade. If people feel an emotional connection to you, albeit one based entirely on superficial conversation, they are more likely to buy coffee from you rather than Joe."

"People'd quit visiting his cart so much if they knew he tops off his coffee grounds with rat shit," Malone said with a grin. He apparently read expressions much better than she did and preempted her question. "Kidding. Joe's a good guy. His pastries are second-rate, but I like him anyway. Just don't tell him I said that, okay?"

"I don't habitually converse with him," Brennan replied, amused in spite of her desire to be left alone to think. "Booth and I were out of the country for seven months. That's why we hadn't visited your stand. " She didn't know why she chose to share this information with him and made a mental note to relay some of this dialogue to Angela in hopes of clarification.

"Ah." Malone clasped his hands in front of him and looked sideways at her. "But now you're back again. Waiting. Is he late?"

She placed the cup on the ground and withdrew the plane ticket from the pocket of her coat. Wordlessly, she handed it to him.

Malone perused the electronic printout interestedly. "Indonesia to D.C. June 17th, 1:20 pm." He glanced at his watch and over at her again. "Your plane got in early. I wouldn't worry yet."

"No." Brennan realized his misinterpretation. "Though the date and time are correct, the ticket has been voided." She pointed to the cancellation. "We returned several months earlier than anticipated due to work circumstances. However, our relationship since our return has made social interaction over coffee somewhat … strained."

He was silent, eyeing a couple as they hurried past to see if they would stop and purchase anything. They didn't. For some reason, Brennan felt compelled to continue explaining.

"He is angry," she said slowly. "In part, I am to blame as was the romantic relationship he moved onto after I hurt him, but I also believe his experiences in Afghanistan may have contributed to his emotional retreat from the friendship he used to share with me."

"You miss him." Malone didn't take his eyes off his cart.

"Yes." She blinked back unexpected tears. "I am not skilled at connecting. There is a certain imperviousness about me that makes people feel I am distant. Uncaring. It makes forging romantic relationships based on emotional intimacy, rather than just sex, quite imposing."

"No offense, Dr. Brennan." He finally looked over at her and there was understanding on his weathered face. "You don't seem all that impervious to me."

Brennan looked down at her feet. "I would like to believe I've changed."

"I'm not sure you were ever as impervious as you think," Malone observed. "Take it from a guy whose stock and trade is people. You said it yourself—if I don't connect, I don't sell coffee. I think you want to believe you're impervious, to protect yourself. Just like he wants to believe he's still angry about whatever happened, to avoid taking another chance and getting burned again."

All day long she'd been avoiding strong emotions. His words sent a gust of hope rustling through her, scattering her calm façade like the leaves being pushed around the park by the wind.

"We made an agreement. It was very foolish." Brennan flushed at the absurdity and laughed to cover her embarrassment. "Very foolish. I don't know why I even agreed. We wrote down individual notations on pieces of paper and burned them."

Malone didn't laugh. He picked up her empty cup and discarded it in the garbage can beside the bench. "What was on the papers?"

"The dates of when we thought we might be able to be together again, like we used to be, but differently." She paused, hating the comingled fear, shame and secret anticipation taking up residence in her head. "He referred to it as magic but no such thing exists. Essentially, we entrusted any prospect of a future romance between us to coincidence."

He looked again at the ticket he still held in his hand. "You wrote down your original return date. Today."

"When we first departed, we agreed to meet back in one year's time at your coffee cart. It was something I looked forward to while overseas," she explained sheepishly, pulling out her phone and making a show of checking her messages. Angela, demanding answers immediately. Russ. An invitation to a conference—

"Dr. Brennan?"

Irritated by his refusal to go away in spite of the visible signs of annoyance she was sure she was correctly projecting, she looked up at him. "What?"

"I think he was also looking forward to that meeting."

Brennan was affronted by his wholly uninformed conjecture. "You have no way of knowing that."

Silently, Malone pointed.

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

His lungs screamed curses in several different languages at him, joining the chorus of his agonized knees. All of it was drowned out as Booth pulled up to the edge of the park and realized that he'd been wrong. Magic existed. It was sitting right in front of him, in the guise of a preternaturally beautiful plainclothes scientist who had written down the same thing.

"Bones!"

Brennan looked over from the bench—their bench, right next to their cart—and stared straight at him.

He stood there dumbly, chest heaving, heart warning him that next time he jumpstarted it that way without warning, he was looking at a permanent strike.

For a long moment, she sat there just looking at him. Then the corner of her lips tugged upwards, slowly supplanting uncertainty with a small, shy grin that was equal parts amazement and relief. Booth felt a matching smile take over his own face except that small didn't describe it. He was probably a candidate for the world's sappiest guy right at that point, grinning so widely from ear to ear he might as well have been a Jack o' Lantern. A candle inside him burst into flame as she got up and started towards him.

She didn't hurry. Each step was purposeful but measured, her gaze never wavering from his until she stopped directly in front of him. Typically, she didn't pull any punches, not even to say she was glad to see him.

"You should know I'll probably always be somewhat impervious."

He accepted her honesty and was grateful for it, even when it poured cold water on his immediate romantic fantasies.

"I'll probably always be a little angry," Booth admitted reluctantly. He owed her that much candor, at least.

The light in her eyes dimmed and he realized she'd misunderstood him.

"No, Bones, that's not what—don't look like that." He grabbed her hand. She didn't return the gesture, but neither did she reject it. "I wasn't talking about you or Hannah." Booth paused to try and get things straight in his head.

Brennan waited, the wind whipping her hair into tangles that partially obscured her face. He was aware of the measure of trust she was placing in him by not walking away.

"Bones, some part of me will always be angry at something. That's what I meant. It's not specific to a person, necessarily. I'm not proud of it, but that's kind of my personality. It … it's part of what makes me so good at hunting down criminals." He wanted her to understand. He _needed_ her to understand. The thought that she might not left him feeling hollowed out. Empty. "Does that make any sense?"

"Yes."

If his knees hadn't already been weak from his run, they would've wobbled then.

"Sweets would say your anger is equivalent to my emotional distancing." She pulled her hand free and tried to smooth back the strands occluding her vision. "It's your own type of imperviousness. We both require it to do our jobs effectively."

As often as Brennan overlooked things that were completely obvious to everybody, there were times when she just immediately _got_ something that the rest of the world repeatedly missed. Like him.

For the last half-decade, he'd been carrying an ace pressed close to his chest. Now, finally laying his cards on the table, Booth no longer felt like he was gambling.

"I love you."

That little smile returned to her lips briefly before it morphed into a full-on Brennan smirk, teasing: _I read people better than you think._

"In an attagirl kind of way?"

"More like in an 'I'm about to get a fine for public indecency'," he retorted, reaching for her.

She dodged him with a quick sidestep. "I will attempt to be less impervious in our romantic relationship, if you will agree to channel any lingering anger at me solely into catching bad guys."

Hearing the words "romantic relationship" from Brennan's lips and knowing they were finally associated with him made him want to kiss those lips. Badly.

"Deal." He took another step in her direction and she backed away, grinning.

"You realize this meeting is a coincidence."

"No." Booth snorted in derision. "You're way off on that one, Bones."

"You don't truly believe—"

"Oh, yeah, I believe," he interrupted, lunging forward and wrapping an arm around her waist. It was a possessive gesture that carried a certain amount of risk if Brennan wasn't quite yet ready, in spite of everything. She grabbed a fistful of his t-shirt and yanked him flush with her chest, eyes laughing even while they challenged his implied dominance.

Booth chuckled. "This is magic, Bones." He encompassed the back of her neck with one big hand and counted it as another miracle when she didn't knee him. "Don't even think about arguing."

Brennan traced idle patterns high on his chest. "You like arguing."

It was hard to tell whether she was aware of what she was doing to him but, given the not-so-innocent way she kept looking up at him from under her lashes, Booth took an educated guess: She knew she was making him crazy. And she was enjoying it.

He clamped his free hand over hers and pressed her palm flat to his chest. "Easy, Bones. You're giving 'hot under the collar' a whole new meaning."

She looked at him blankly. Booth chose to forgo the lesson on idioms for a change, fixating instead on her slightly parted, laughing lips.

"You know what's better than arguing?"

Brennan raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to answer his own question.

"Kissing." Booth freed her hand and lifted his to her cheek. "Kissing is way, way better than arguing."

She smiled at him, but a question lingered in her eyes as she tilted her head toward his. "So … we're together now?"

"I think we might be, Bones." Booth nudged a strand of hair out of the way and lowered his mouth until their lips touched softly. "I think we just might be, finally."

The kiss was long and short, slow and fast, aggressive and tender, all the dichotomies that made up their partnership at once present and reconciling as they kissed and whispered, laughed, bickered, and kissed again, their bodies pressed even closer together by the rising onslaught of the wind.

Francis Malone watched from his spot on the park bench. His wife, ever the romantic, would probably have said the couple was lost in their embrace. When they finally separated and walked away, his arm around her waist, her head leaning comfortably into his chest, their laughter drifted back to him. There was nothing lost about that sound, he mused to himself. If anything, it indicated the pair had finally found something long missing.

Malone got up and began closing down shop for the day, glancing back at the retreating couple every few minutes and smiling when he found their progress across the park impaired as they frequently stopped to refresh their memories of each other's lips.

The scientist swatted her partner for some reason or other. He retaliated by poking her in the ribs. She shouted and squirmed away, leading him on a chase that was abbreviated when neither could keep their hands off each other for less than a minute. They stood in front of a fountain and held each other, her coat serving double duty to protect them from the elements while his broad shoulders shielded her from the majority of the fountain's spray.

The vendor hummed to himself cheerfully, oblivious to the roar of thunder overhead. Whatever Dr. Brennan might say about his theories, he reflected, the windy afternoon had held more than a little bit of magic.

**o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o**

**A/N: That's how I had hoped the season would begin or end. Since it didn't, I wrote it into existence via my usual AU take on the things. Hope you liked it. =)**


End file.
